02/16/2008, 2:45pm, EST
Saturday, February 16thJapan press: Toshiba to end HD DVD
Previous reports that Toshiba will end its efforts in HD DVD are accurate, according to a report by Japanese broadcaster NHK as well as additional sources. The electronics maker is poised to both stop future development as well as ramp down manufacturing of HD DVD players, recorders, and PC drives. The move will be one of Toshiba's costliest to date and should cost hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the Japan press outlet. Toshiba has not responded to the claims, though sources have suggested an official announcement will be made soon.
If accurate, the end to HD DVD will represent one of the quickest ever for competing formats and will effectively hand the entire HD movie format war to its chief opponent, Blu-ray. The rapid fall began with movie studio Warner Bros.' plan to drop HD DVD just before the Consumer Electronics Show in January, which handed a clear majority of HD movies to Blu-ray and forced the HD DVD Promotional Group to cancel its keynote presentation for the event. The shift led to a sustained marketshare lead for Blu-ray almost immediately afterwards and spurred several independent studios to echo Warner's Blu-ray only policy.
Toshiba's decision is widely believed to have been accelerated by events of the past week, which saw Best Buy, Netflix, and ultimately Wal-Mart all announce that they would drop HD DVD over coming months, all but killing HD DVD's ability to gain traction in the American market.
Until Warner's decision, both formats had largely remained competitive with each other since their respective launches in 2006. Blu-ray typically enjoyed wider support from hardware manufacturers such as Pioneer, Samsung, and Sony, but was countered by the typically lower prices of Toshiba's HD DVD players as well as official support from Microsoft which saw an Xbox 360 add-on drive and official promotion of the standard for Windows PCs.
Filed under: industry
Other story tags: sony, Samsung, blu-ray, Toshiba, HD DVD, Warner, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Netflix, Pioneer
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It would be nice if Sony allowed some kind of trade-in discount program for HD-DVD owners so they can switch over quickly and BR can take over the world.
I own neither because I was waiting for the war to end....
Long Live Blue Ray .... good riddance HD .. all HD was doing was holding up the progress of High Def content and Microsoft was doing all it could to prolong the format wart so it had more time to develop it's own proprietary standard to suites it's own ends before any one HD format became too popular , they have been trying to prop up HD for ages.
Region Coding...
CVB
I have the 360 HD-DVD add-on that I've used for movies like Serenity, Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz. I also have a PS3 that I've purchased far more movies for.
Not once did I ever feel like I was "missing" something with my 1.0 profile player, nor did I feel like the HD-DVDs gave me anything extra. I guess I just didn't care enough about additional features.
If Microsoft had produced a game console and add-on drive that didn't sound like a vacuum cleaner when I turned it on, I may have rooted more for "red." My only other experience w/ a red player was the first-to-market Toshiba that took over a minute to boot. My PS3, on the other hand, is virtually silent and does a great job with Blu-ray.
These are just opinions. I also think the 360's Halo 3 is *crap* compared to PS3's Warhawk, so I'm probably in the minority of the online population.
OH - the calamity, the horror, the pain and agony!!!.. THe WAR...Make it stop - can't we all just get along?
Please - we all knew this would happen back in 2005. Just look at the supporting companies, movie studio support, retailers, - but most importantly look at the 'Companies listed as Members of the Board or Managing Members' - That says it all.
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In interesting thing to watch pan out - yes.. a horrible WAR.. I don't think so.
http://www.engadget.com/2005/09/19/blu-ray-vs-hd-dvd-state-of-the-union-s-division/